3DS to outperform DS first year sales in US

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 14 November, 2011

What crisis?

The 3DS is on track to outperform the DS for first year sales in the US, Nintendo has said.

The 3DS sold 1.65 million units in the US in the eight months following launch. The DS sold 2.37 million units in its first 12 months on sale, from November 2004 to October 2005. Half of those sales were made during the Christmas period.

In a note released today Nintendo highlighted the fact that the 3DS' first Christmas is around the corner, as are the launches of Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7.

"With a massive lineup of software on the way and the first-year sales record of Nintendo DS in its sights, Nintendo 3DS enters its first holiday season with a full head of steam," said Nintendo of America executive Scott Moffitt.

Meanwhile, Nintendo released some impressive new statistics. The Japanese firm sold more than 675,000 combined hardware units in October, including more than 250,000 3DS units, nearly 250,000 Wii units and nearly 180,000 units in the Nintendo DS family of systems.

During 2011, Nintendo has sold a combined seven million hardware units. More than 55 million games have been sold for Nintendo platforms, a figure Nintendo expects to swell considerably when The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword launches this month.

The Wii is up eight per cent year on year. The DS, the best-selling video game system ever in the US, is up 23 per cent over the previous month. the two platforms have sold more than 87 million combined hardware units and more than 540 million combined units of software in the US.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (22) Latest comment 3 months ago

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  • miketheiron #1 3 months ago

    But wasn't the original DS's launch pretty poor? I thought it was only after they DS-Lite-ified it that sales really took off, no?

  • bantamenace #2 3 months ago

    67.25% of all statistics are made up

  • Spuzzell #3 3 months ago

    540 million games sold.

    That's a LOT.

    Wow, what a stupidly obvious thing for me to take the time to say. I'm a worthless, pointless muppet. This must be how Michael Pachter feels all day.

  • jtodroc #4 3 months ago

    I'm sure we'd still be talking about a crisis if they hadn't dropped the price. Glad to see its doing well now though.

  • LazyDan #5 3 months ago

    @Spuzzell Michael Pachter always knew the 3DS was going to turn around and become more successful than the DS, he predicted it in 2003 but no one listened.

    (Some serious sarcasm.)

  • Pwnsweet #6 3 months ago

    In other news, Nintendo recently posted an almost-1-billion dollar loss somehow.

  • gwil #7 3 months ago

    "A full head of steam"?

    What?

  • Mr.Spo #8 3 months ago

    @Pwnsweet--The majority of which can be put down to currency exchange problems, which has literally taken hundreds of millions of dollars from Nintendo's balance sheet. The rest (the smaller portion of the loss) can be put down to selling 3DS at a loss since the price cut, and low 3DS software sales. Software is where the real money is--and without any hit titles across the board, Nintendo can't make much of a dent in the losses they're posting. This should improve on the back of Mario Kart, Mario Land, Zelda, Kirby and whatever third party stuff sells well--Monster Hunter, Just Dance and Mario & Sonic at the Olympics should all do pretty well.

    Still, this is pretty impressive for 3DS, which has been universally written off--the DS had a Christmas launch in the US, which did give it a big boost to start with. It didn't pick up again until the following Christmas, when Nintendogs, Mario Kart and Animal Crossing were available. The 3DS hasn't had a Christmas season yet--in the next two months, with Mario Land and Mario Kart coming, Monster Hunter in Japan, and a variety of hardware bundles (Zelda, Mario Land, Nintendogs) available around the globe, combined with the seasonal uptake in consumer spending, it should do very very well. The big question is whether or not Nintendo sell enough 3DS software to offset the effects of the price cut, to convince third parties to jump back on board, build momentum for the device and whether or not this allows them to cut their full-year loss to the $200millionish they've predicted.

  • Collymilad #9 3 months ago

    What crisis?

    The one that caused them to have a massive price slash? It's hardly surprising sales have picked up after that, is it?

  • PinktotheLast #10 3 months ago

    @gwil
    Exactly what I thought!
    He's horribly mangled a train metaphor there.

  • retr0gamer #11 3 months ago

    The tagline would be funny if eurogamer wasn't also guilty of the scaremongering 'Nintendo are doomed' articles that have been in every videogame website lately. I'd much prefer if some actual journalism was carried out by you guys instead of the Daily Mail quality that is spewed out in the news section.

  • Histeria #12 3 months ago

    @PinktotheLast "A full head steam" is a pretty common phrase.

    http://idio ms.thefreedictionary.com/steam

  • IronCladChicken #13 3 months ago

    What crisis?

    The one gaming sites (like Eurogamer) invented to garner hits.

    :champ:

  • giapel #14 3 months ago

    Nintendo launched a new hardware full of potential. It gave 3rd parties some time to get early hits without serious competition from Nintendo. 3rd parties failed to deliver, yet again. Now Nintendo is coming out with the big guns, sales are gonna rocket, Nintendo will get the majority of them, 3rd parties will complain they can't compete and the cycle goes on and on and on.

  • kinky_mong #15 3 months ago

    Good on them, I've contributed another sale to them this morning after seeing the Zelda bundle on Amazon.

  • Jay1983 #16 3 months ago

    @giapel
    Exactly. Ive said it myself before too. Devs are the 1s delaying games after Nintendo gave them a chance to shine without any Ninty game competition. Its stupid, and now they will complain no end when they are outsold by Nintendos gems.

  • skunkfish #17 3 months ago

    @Pwnsweet

    Luckily they have over a trillion yen in cash to cover any losses (£9.5bn) and no borrowing.

  • Jay1983 #18 3 months ago

    @skunkfish
    Actually, from what i have read, Nintendo have made over 20 billion dollars in the past 10 years alone without any losses... That doesnt include the 20 years prior to that since their last loss. Yeah, its safe to say they have plenty of cash to play with.
    Edited by 1 at 14/11/11 @ 17:57

  • Mister-Wario #19 3 months ago

    At this stage I'm looking forward to something on 3DS that isn't merely a sequel to something else and will last longer than a couple of days.

  • getittoomebaby #20 3 months ago

    All this ever tells me is you should wait a significant piece of time before considering purchasing any Nintendo hardware. Let the peeps who like Nintendo blow their wad early and we can get a better price and at least 2 games to play about a year down the track.

    BTW I don't believe Eurogamer is any different to any other gaming website in reporting on Nintendo's woes or praises etc. I think depending on your bent (i.e. do you view the world as centred around Nintendo or not) the articles will have different meaning.

  • bradgrenz #21 3 months ago

    You know what else outsold the DS in its first year? The PSP.

    The DS sold like crap for quite a while and didn't really become a hit until the DS Lite revision came out and Nintendo started it's big push for casuals with Nintendogs and Brain Age. Unfortunately for Nintendo, they can't count on the casuals to save them. That market is well satisfied by smart phones.

    I still think there is a sizable hardcore market for portables, but Nintendo is hamstrung by their underpowered hardware, terrible dual analog solution and 3D backlash. Should be interesting when the Vita launches.

  • Dewin #22 3 months ago

    This is apples and oranges. When the original DS launched there was almost no casual market. Gaming wasn't as mainstream as it is now. So the DS had to build that market, which it did (together with the Wii). The 3DS on the other hand is now launched in a market that is significally bigger than it was when the DS launched. And with so many people already having a DS, the brand recognition together with bigger market should have propelled 3DS sales a whole lot further than it is currently doing. So you can spin these number any way you want really, but i'm not seeing this as a possitive thing.